Christmas Eve 1914: Rifleman Graham Williams of the London Rifle Brigade was on sentry duty in the forward trenches on the Western Front …
I was standing on the firestep, gazing towards the German lines and thinking what a different sort of Christmas Eve this was from any I had experienced in the past. In the ordinary way of things, my father would be making Rum Punch from an old family recipe, which had been written out by his grandfather – and was kept, of all places, in the Family Bible!
Earlier, after the evening meal, we would have decorated the living rooms and hall with the traditional greenery and would now be looking forward to wishing one another a ‘Happy Christmas’ and toasting the occasion in the result of my father’s labours.
Instead of this, here was I, standing in a waterlogged trench in a muddy Flemish field and staring out over the flat, empty and desolate countryside with no signs of life. There had been no shooting by either side since the sniper’s shot that morning, which had killed young Bassingham. But this was not at all unusual.
Then, suddenly, lights began to appear along the German parapet, which were evidently some makeshift Christmas trees, adorned with lighted candles which burnt steadily in the still, frosty air!
Other sentries, of course, had seen the same thing and quickly awoke those on duty, asleep in the shelters, to ‘come and see this thing, which had come to pass’. Then our opponents started to sing Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht. This was actually the first time I heard this carol, which was not then so popular in this country as it has since become.
They finished their carol and we thought that we ought to retaliate in some way, so we sang The First Nowell, and when we finished they all began clapping; and then they struck up with another favourite of theirs, O Tanenbaum.
And so it went on. First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started to sing O Come All Ye Faithful the Germans immediately joined in, singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this was really a most extraordinary thing – two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war!
A Happy Christmas to all our readers
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